Peace

Rocky Anderson: Overthrow the 'dictatorship of money'

editor — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 07:27:46 -0700

Rocky Anderson is always deferential to Occupy Wall Street when asked about the movement, most recently in a Jan. 31 interview with the online environmental magazine Grist. Occupy has been a "very healthy thing in this country," and there’s an "enormous convergence" between its concerns and his. But for inspiration, the Justice Party candidate points to Tahrir Square, not Zucotti Park.

"One of the great inspirations for us was what we saw in much of the Arab world, where people were intent on overthrowing their nations’ dictators," he told Grist's special projects editor Greg Hanscom during a wide-ranging Q&A. "… They put their lives on the line, utilizing democratized means of communication through social networking and engaging in classic grassroots organizing — and they succeeded."

Exposing the mainstream media's 'massive failures'

editor — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 14:03:45 -0700

Watching Newsweek's Eleanor Clift confront the question "Are most political reporters simply insiders?" is a discomfiting experience. Her struggle to defend the indefensible unavoidably inspires compassion for her uneasy predicament. But the case she makes so proves the point that any sympathy engendered morphs quickly into cynicism.

The political reporter appeared on a Dec. 29, 2011, panel discussion on Al Jazeera, subtitled the question du jour. Joining her were Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and Justice Party presidential candidate Rocky Anderson, of whose candidacy Clift knew nothing. Al Jazeera devoted a third of the half-hour program's opinions to the former Salt Lake City mayor. Clift apparently had never heard of him.

"I think Rocky Anderson is running probably to get his issues out there, more than from an expectation that he might necessarily win," she awkwardly speculated aloud, unsure about the Justice Party's name, no less.

Jill Stein, the Green Party and the 'Green New Deal'

editor — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 09:35:08 -0700

Seven weeks before Jill Stein declared her candidacy for president, the Lexington, Mass., physician outlined her priorities in a plan she called the "Green New Deal" – jobs, climate change, universal health care and peace. When she announced her bid for the Green Party nomination on Oct. 24, 2011, the Chicago native presented herself as an alternative to the two "Wall Street parties.”

“They’re privatizing education, rolling back civil liberties and racial justice, plundering the environment and driving us towards the calamity of climate change,” she said in a news release accompanying her announcement. "… We need people in Washington who refuse to be bought by lobbyist money and for whom change is not just a slogan.”

Santa Claus and September 11

editor — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 18:11:45 -0600

I was not sure what to do on the tenth anniversary of Sept. 11. I did not plan to attend any events, but I still found my mind full of thoughts. I had the urge to remind myself that 10 years ago we all witnessed an attack on humanity and a gross representation, in fact a clear misrepresentation, of Islam.

Muslims have been trying to actively engage in an open dialogue with people of other faiths and of no faith for the past 10 years. I don’t know how far we have actually come. It will be nice to know if we have made any headway. I had no idea how to get these questions answered until my car rolled out of the parking lot of the local Islamic Center.

Sheehan calls for grass-roots revolt against 'robber class'

editor — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0600

Cindy Sheehan doesn’t sit down and relax very often. The internationally known peace and human rights activist just returned home to California from a two-week trip to Japan and soon afterwards embarked on a bus tour of the Northwest.

“Today,” she wrote in her blog for Aug. 21, “the Re-Creating Revolutionary Communities or Bust Tour kicked off our nine-city tour in Oregon and California with some exciting visits in Eugene, Ore.”

Cynthia McKinney’s report on Libya

editor — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 16:18:06 -0600

The day following the fall of Tripoli to CIA/NATO backed rebels, Cynthia McKinney spoke at Cleveland State University in downtown Cleveland about her fact-finding mission to Libya. The Aug. 22 event, which had been arranged weeks in advance of the dramatic events transpiring in Libya, was part of a 21-city tour by the six-term congresswoman and Green Party presidential candidate.

Flanked by an honor guard of the New Black Panther Party dressed in black uniforms and black berets, McKinney opened her remarks by drawing parallels between the way the mainstream media has repeatedly lied to the public about Libya and quotes from Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebels – “If you repeat a lie a thousand times, people will come to believe it." – and Muammar Qaddafi – “If you tell one truth, you will smash a thousand lies.”

Wars bankrupting the American economy

editor — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 19:13:23 -0600

In 1953, at the beginning of his presidency, Dwight D. Eisenhower gave a speech in which he said, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."

That quotation is apt today. According to the War Resisters League, the United States spends 59 percent of its budget on the military. When spending on veterans’ affairs and nuclear weapons programs are added, Businessinsider.com says, the grand total is $1.01–1.35 trillion spent on national defense in 2010.

Peace activist Cindy Sheehan to speak in Bloomington

editor — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 17:33:58 -0600

Cindy Sheehan, internationally renowned peace activist, will speak in Bloomington at 7 p.m. on Wed., Oct. 5, at the Whittenburger Auditorium on the IU campus.

The title of Sheehan's address is "The War Economy and You."

Sheehan is the mother of Spc. Casey Sheehan, who was killed in action in the Iraq war on April 4, 2004. Since then she has been an activist for peace and human rights.

MEDIAlternative: Same as it ever was

editor — Sat, 14 May 2011 07:43:41 -0600

Change is in the air. Some of this is welcome change: the grassroots democracy movement across the Middle East and North Africa comes to mind. As does the worker uprising in Madison, Wis., and cities and towns across these United States.

More often than not, however, this change has been catastrophic. Weather-related disasters of historic proportions are wreaking havoc on the people and the land across the American South. Overseas, the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant continues to threaten public health and safety in northeast Japan and beyond.

INTERVIEW: Quigley on drone warfare in Indiana

editor — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 19:20:23 -0700

The U.S. military, especially the CIA, is relying increasingly on unmanned aerial vehicles, or “drones,” to conduct both surveillance and bombing in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq. Indiana is home to multiple sites of manufacturing, testing and support of drones and drone technology. Purdue University is involved, as are several Indiana companies.

In Bloomington at 7 p.m. on March 2, Quigley will outline those Indiana connections and the legal and moral concerns over aerial robotic attacks. He will also discuss the growing resistance to drone warfare. The talk will take place in room 1B of the public library, and its title is, “Indiana Drones: Robotic Warfare in the Heartland.”